After updating a multi server installation of Ispconfig3 problems occured when editing existing or adding new websites on one of the servers.

If the site had SSL enabled the apache2 vhosts file for the site (located in /etc/apache2/sites-availible) would get empty values for SSLCertificateFile, SSLCertificateKeyFile and SSLCertificateChainFile fields, causing it to revert to old configuration or not load the site at all. At some point apache2 wouldn’t reload at all so to get it upp the site had to be disabled by removing /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/100-sitename.vhost file.

If the site was running under PHP-FPM the site would report Internal server error 501 caused by the socket file /var/lib/php5-fpm/webXXX.sock was owned by root and not by the web user. This in turned was caused by the fields listen.owner and listen.group in webXXX.conf (for PHP-FPM) was empty.

Since this was a multi server installation and this problem only occured on one server they could be compared. It turned out that the problem was caused in the directory /usr/local/ispconfig/server/plugins-enabled. The files in this directory should be symbolic links to the corresponding files in /usr/local/ispconfig/server/plugins-available, but after a move of the Ispconfig3 installation from an older server, these links had become real files instead of symbolic links.

This meant that the files in /usr/local/ispconfig/server/plugins-enabled was still Ispconfig 3.0 files while the ones in /usr/local/ispconfig/server/plugins-available was Ispconfig 3.1. To resolve the problem, to be on the safe side, make a backup of /usr/local/ispconfig/server/plugins-enabled and then run:

After upgrading from Ispconfig 3.0 to 3.1 odd things started to happen. For example, when saving a DNS secondary zone it would not store the client selected. Same thing when saving an email domian, client info and spam filter setting just would save.

Upgrading a system running Ispconfig3 on Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS) to 14.04 is quite straight forward. However there are some issues to consider before doing so. It might affect some of the sites that are being hosted.

Ubuntu 14.04 will move you from Apache 2.2 to 2.4

php will be upgraded from 5.3 to 5.5. Most modern CMS:es like Joomla and WordPress will run on php 5.5 but clients can be using other software or third party extensions that are not ready for php 5.5

Upgrade procedure:

Backup, backup and backup. And do some backup again.

Prepare your users for some downtime. The upgrade can take up to several hours depending on your server.

Upgrade all installed packages so you have the latest versions;
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Then run do-release-upgrade

During the upgrade process you probably will be prompted several times about configuration files that have been locally modified. I usually examine the differences using D option and in most cases I select to install the new configuration file using Y option.

After Ubuntu has been upgraded and the system has been rebooted you must reconfigure Ispconfig3. I did it by using the update procuedure even though I was running the latest Ispconfig before I upgraded Ubuntu:
cd /tmp
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/ispconfig/files/ISPConfig%203/ISPConfig-3.0.5.4p5/ISPConfig-3.0.5.4p5.tar.gz
tar xvzf ISPConfig-3.0.5.4p5.tar.gz
cd ispconfig3_install/install
php -q update.php

Allow Ispconfig3 to reconfigure your services

In my case Apache2 wouldn’t start after the upgrade. It was caused by the ruby module and since I don’t use it my simple solution for the moment was just to disable it:
a2dismod ruby
service apache2 restart

php imap extension had been disabled, so to fix it:
php5enmod imap
service apache2 restart

If you are hosting PrestaShop sites, you may need to disable php opcache described here or disable encryption by issuing the SQL command: UPDATE `ps_configuration` SET `value` = ‘0’ WHERE `name` = ‘PS_CIPHER_ALGORITHM’;

Apache2 configuration files has been moved from /etc/apache2/conf.d to /etc/apache2/conf-availible directory. Then to enable them you need to symlink the configuration file from /etc/apache2/conf-availible to /etc/apache2/conf-enabled and issue the command: service apache2 restart

You might experience problems with Postfix after the upgrade with log entries like fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms and mail not being sent from the mailqueue. In that case:apt-get install sasl2-bin
edit /etc/default/saslauthd and set START=yes/etc/init.d/saslauthd start
service amavis restart
service postfix restart
I also had to comment out two lines in /etc/postfix/main.cf:#smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth
#smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
And then do:service postfix restart

When setting up a website in Ispconfig3 I wanted to run a cron job (shell script) for the site (setup under Sites -> Cron jobs) but the job did not execute. When examining the /var/log/auth.log I found lines like these:

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